


build all of me (so i won't fall to pieces)

by womanaction



Series: AA Missing Scenes & Episode Tags [2]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 22:01:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12285237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanaction/pseuds/womanaction
Summary: In the middle of the war, Annie and Abed talk. Missing scene from 3x14 "Pillows and Blankets."





	build all of me (so i won't fall to pieces)

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by non-AO3 user Ezza, who said: "I'd love to read a Annie/Abed hurt/confort style story in the 'pillow/blanket-fort war' episode setting. I think you could write something really special."

Annie’s humming as she puts away her “medical equipment” – really mostly Band-Aids, Neosporin, and Advil, plus a few spare things pilfered from the campus clinic that make her feel important. And she does feel important, essential even, during the day when the wounded and achey are pouring in and asking for her aid. Right now she feels tired and alone and a little silly, folding up sheets like a real wartime hospital administrator as her classmates sleep in their forts of pillows and blankets. It should feel like a slumber party, the kind she never really got invited to in middle school, but this time she’s basically uninvited herself by declaring herself Switzerland. Honestly, she really just wants to go back to the permanent slumber party of the apartment, only Troy and Abed aren’t speaking.

That thought makes her heart hurt, so she hums a little louder.

“Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy?”

She jumps. Abed, sitting on a cot, looks mildly apologetic. He’s taken off his pillow hat and is holding it in his lap. “I guess my catlike stealth is adaptive in the war. Not so much in the clinic.”

“Abed! Are you hurt?” Impulsively, she throws her arms around him. By the time he’s beginning to reciprocate she’s already pulled away to examine him. No obvious cuts or bruises.

“No,” he says bravely. “Just stopped by to see an old friend.”

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she says warmly, taking a seat next to him on the cot. It’s a little small for two people. Their shoulders and legs brush. It’s more intimacy than she’s felt in what feels like forever, even though she’s been constantly touching her “patients.”

They sit in silence for a minute, then Abed says, “A lot of people haven’t been, have they?”

It’s not really a question the way he says it, but she answers anyway. “No. They haven’t been. This war…it needs to end, before more people get hurt.”

“It can’t,” he replies shortly.

She’s exhausted, but that’s probably no excuse for what she blurts out next. “God, Abed, don’t you care?”

Annie regrets it immediately. The hurt on his face is immediately evident, and so vivid it’s painful. He looks at her, silently reproachful. “I’m sorry,” she says, soft and inadequate. “I just…it’s too much. I can’t help everyone.” _I can’t help you,_ she adds silently.

He continues to regard her, and she wonders if he understands the words she left unspoken. Finally, he turns away to look at the wall. In an even flatter tone than usual, he utters five words. “I miss him so much.”

She wants to say: _I know you do, so just stop this pointless fight and go back to being friends_. She wants to say: _Let’s wake up Troy now and you guys can hug and do your silly secret handshake and we can knock down all the forts and just go home_. She wants to say: _I miss him too, and you, because while you’ve been destroying everything important I’ve been trying to hold things together_.

She doesn’t say any of these things. Instead, she reaches out and takes his hand in hers. It’s a familiar gesture, something they’ve done dozens of times. It feels different now though, heavier somehow. Like his hand is weighed in gold. She traces his lifeline as he silently watches. Then he swallows and his hand twitches like he’s thinking about snatching it back, and suddenly she’s speaking without thinking again.

“You’re going to get through this,” she says, with her famously unmatched determination. “You’re going to get through this, and you and Troy will laugh about it, because you guys are the best friends in the world and you’re not going to let something like this keep you apart for long.”

His hand twitches again. She loosens her grip, but he holds on. His eyes are searching hers as she continues, “And even if you don’t, I’ll still be there. For both of you. Because I care about you, Abed.”

She tries to fill those words with all the meaning of their three years of friendship in this crazy, wonderful, frustrating place. His mouth quirks a little as he looks at her, and after a second he squeezes, then drops, her hand. Annie wonders if he’ll leave now, satisfied with what little comfort she could give him, but instead he reaches up and cups her face.

For a brief wild second, she thinks he’s going to kiss her. But he seems to make some sort of sudden decision and says matter-of-factly, “You can’t sleep here.”

It’s an observation, not a request, but she understands the offer he’s extending. “I can,” she protests weakly, even though she’s been restless since this debacle began. “Besides, it’s the only place on campus where I can have a pillow and a blanket. I need both to sleep, you know.”

“You can bring your blanket,” he says offhandedly.

“I can’t take a side, Abed,” she says firmly.

“I have my private quarters. Nobody would have to know.” She feels herself flush at the unintended innuendo, and he seems to belatedly realize that his hand is still touching her face. He shifts, leaving his hand hanging awkwardly between them, inches away from her skin. “You think you have to be perfect for people to love you,” he says bluntly. “But you’re already amazing, Annie. You don’t always have to be strong.”

Her resolve crumbles. “Let me get my blanket,” she says weakly. He nods.

She’s keenly aware of the sound of her own breathing as they silently pick their way through the fort. His eyes are still sad as they enter his quarters, but he holds her blanket up like a sacred banner, not letting it touch the ground.

Later, she has a vague memory of him saying “Thank you,” as her eyes drifted shut, but she must have fallen asleep before she had a chance to ask him what for.


End file.
